Respect

Your peers respect you, your employers often do not. Your peers although they may jest know they have to watch how they handle you, whereas your employers think they can treat you as they please because they think they're better than you, and they think they're better than you because they're paying you, which means they own you because they've bought and paid for you. Huge difference, and this is their arrogance. It's an asymmetric relationship, and that's their contempt for you on show.

And just because some employers treat some employees well, doesn't mean most do - in much the way some slave owners treated some slaves well (and even set them free) - doesn't mean most did